Miguel Marcos and Jordi Pericot, Honorary Awards of the Gallery Night

Gallerist Miguel Marcos and artist Jordi Pericot will be awarded Honorary Awards during the seventeenth edition of the GAC Awards. The two honorary awards are the most prominent among the eleven awarded at this gala.

Gallerism Night is the meeting point and reaffirmation of the sector, in addition to the stage where gallerists reward trajectories, proposals and initiatives. Organized by the association Galeries d'Art de Catalunya (GAC), with the collaboration of the association Art Barcelona, the Gallery Night highlights the projection and the necessary visibility of a crucial sector in the cultural ecosystem country In this context, the Night presents a new edition of the GAC Awards, which make it possible to measure the state and trends of gallerism and art in Catalonia today.

The two Honorary Awards are awarded by the boards of the two convening associations (Galeries d'Art de Catalunya and Art Barcelona), while the rest of the awards that will be presented at the Night are decided by a jury chaired by Pilar Parcerisas and also included by critic Juan Bufill, artist Gino Rubert, curator Àlex Mitrani and curator Natalia Chocarro . The announcement of the two Honorary Awards in the gallerist and artist categories are a recognition of the career of great figures in the visual arts in Catalonia.

Miguel Marcos is a gallerist, cultural manager and collector. His name appears closely linked to the panorama of visual arts in Barcelona over the last 25 years, as a fundamental piece in the projection and internationalization of the art gallery, based on codes of rigor and quality.

In 1981 he founded his first gallery in Zaragoza and six years later he opened an office in Madrid. In 1998, he settled in Barcelona, from where he has pivoted a solid trajectory of spreading the visual arts. The initial exhibition of his gallery in Barcelona was Quatre emplazaments, by Joan Brossa. Since then it has presented more than 140 samples in its space next to the Palau de la Música.

Miguel Marcos has participated in the most relevant fairs in the sector (Arco - of which he has been a member of its organizing committee on several occasions - Basel, Chicago, Cologne, FIAC, CIGE...). He also has a long career as a curator in institutional exhibitions (those dedicated to Tàpies, Brossa and Arroyo, and others such as La realitat desautorizada and El agua y sus sueños contemporáneos) and has advised several public and private collections.

His career as a gallerist was reflected in the book El libro de la Galería Miguel Marcos (1977 – 2005), published in 2007, with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture. In 2013, he created the Miguel Marcos Contemporary Art Documentary Fund in Aínsa (Huska), created with the aim of providing, conserving, disseminating and putting at the service of society a careful selection of bibliography on contemporary art.

Jordi Pericot is a plastic artist, designer, academic and art historian with a wide and solid career, which has made him one of the key figures in the visual arts of Catalonia in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st

His career reflects that of a total artist, who has explored creation, but also study and academic research. He is a visual artist, but also a teacher, film maker, author, editor and promoter of several avant-garde cultural proposals. He created the group MENTE, together with other figures such as Daniel Giralt Miracle, Oriol Bohigas, Ricard Bofill or Ricard Salvat.

The plastic work of Jordi Pericot is considered an illustrative exponent of kinetic art. Between the sixties and eighties he cultivated this trend, in which he proposes an exercise in movement based on abstract creations or figurations that generate optical effects. His kineticism reflects illusions and perceptual experiences, which dialogue with the viewer.

Pericot lived in Paris between 1960 and 1967; on his return he directed the Elisava school until 1980. In 1972 he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale and in 1978 he actively participated in the creation of the new Faculty of Fine Arts at the UB. In 1992 he participated in the founding project of Pompeu Fabra University, where he would work as a professor. He has edited a dozen books on design, art and communication.

The Honorary Award of the GAC Awards 2024 joins a long list of recognitions and awards throughout its extensive career: Gold Medal for Cultural Merit, awarded by Barcelona City Council (2006); Prize of the Social Council for Quality in Teaching (2011), and Pompeu Fabra University Medal (2012). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Santa Isabel de Hungary, in Seville (since 1988) and of the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi (since 2008)

His work forms part of the collections of contemporary art museums in Ottawa, Iowa, Helsinki, Santiago de Chile, Madrid, Seville and Ibiza. In 2012, he inaugurated the Jordi Pericot Cinematic Art Space in Masnou, his village.